Not a powerful electoral issue yet: on the role of European integration in the 2017 German federal election

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of European integration in affecting voting behaviour in the 2017 German federal election. Building on a theoretical analysis of EU issue voting, it demonstrates that despite a list of issues on the European agenda, EU-related issues did not play a prominent role in the campaign, nor were issues primarily addressed from a European perspective. Relying on survey data collected before and after the election, the analysis demonstrates that voters perceived parties to differ considerably on EU integration, but they did not care much about it. Attitudes towards European integration and financial aid to EU member states were only mildly related to vote choice in the 2017 election. European integration thus has not yet become a powerful political issue in Germany. The paper concludes by discussing implications for EU issue voting in future German elections.

KEYWORDS:

• EU issue voting
• Germany
• voting behaviour

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to the reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Harald Schoen is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Mannheim, Germany.

Notes

1. This issue also demonstrates that at times support for European integration and support for immigration do not go hand in hand, although they are considered well-aligned on an overarching cultural, globalisation dimension (e.g., Kriesi et al. 2008, 2012).

2. All respondents not eligible in the 2017 election were removed from the analysis. A combination of design and redressment weights was employed; weighting does not alter the main findings.

3. Both CAPI surveys include open-ended questions about the most important problems but these data were not yet available when preparing this article.

4. Some voters may consider European integration important, but not sufficiently important to count it among the two biggest problems. Moreover, voters who conceive of European integration as a great accomplishment and further integration a desirable goal may not have mentioned European integration as a problem. There is no way to rule out this possibility. However, this pattern is unlikely to be widespread because some respondents who – according to their responses to the closed-ended question about European integration – are fond of European integration actually mentioned European integration when asked for the most important problems (not shown in tabular form).

5. The data do not provide information on perceived party positions towards financial aid.

6. Removing attitudes towards immigration virtually does not change the results, either. This reflects the moderate correlations (about 0.3) between EU-related attitudes and attitudes towards immigration.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grant number SCHO 1358/4-3).